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Wayne Smith | February 11, 2008
THE Brumbies could face eviction from their Canberra headquarters and the NSW Rugby Union could lurch back into financial crisis following the federal Government's decision to scrap a $25 million grant for a national rugby academy.
Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner last week announced the Rudd Government would not honour a June, 2007, promise by the Howard government to provide the money for the academy at Brisbane's Ballymore, claiming the promise was pork-barrelling in an election year and the grant application was badly researched.
The ARU still hopes the "razor gang" decision will be reversed or at least amended. If it is not, the blow to the code could extend way beyond disruption to a project that would have taken Ballymore from a $900,000-a-year liability for Queensland Rugby Union to a paying concern, benefiting other sports and countries, most especially Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Japan.
Had the academy funding been approved, it would have freed up limited ARU resources targeted at the ACT and NSW rugby unions.
The ACTRU is only weeks away from settling a $3.5 million deal to purchase the sizeable Griffith property it leases from a recreational club, now in the hands of an administrator. The ARU, believing the words of former prime minister John Howard that the national academy grant was "money in the bank", had told the Brumbies it would be in a position to contribute $1 million to the purchase costs.
Although ARU chief executive John O'Neill promised yesterday that "no-one would be caught short, as a result of the Government's funding cut", the Brumbies' deal now hinges on whether the ARU is prepared to dip into its fast-shrinking war chest.
"It (the Government's decision to cut the grant) is disappointing and concerning, from a Brumbies perspective, because the fallout could be quite severe," ACTRU chief executive Andrew Fagan said yesterday. "This opportunity to purchase the Griffith property has arisen only because the complex has been placed in the hands of an administrator. If a new buyer comes along who wants to develop the site in some other way, we could face eviction."
NSW's financial position is potentially even more precarious, so much so that rugby insiders have conceded the NSWRU might have to be rescued for the third time in a decade.
The NSWRU, which is rumoured to have been knocked back on its own application for a multi-million-dollar government grant to construct new headquarters at Sydney Football Stadium in partnership with the ground's Trust, had been relying on ARU assistance to meet its growing debt.
"There would not have been a direct transfer of money, had the Government's Ballymore grant gone through, but it would have enabled the ARU to help us," a NSWRU spokesman said last night. "So the Government's decision does have an impact on us, if not directly."
It is understood NSW had been hoping for a $4m allocation from the ARU, money that it now might have to take from reserves.
"There is $4 million there, but there is not going to be much left in the tank after it is spent," the spokesman said. "That's going to hurt us because that was money earmarked to be spent on the development of the game."
O'Neill vowed that, come what may, the ARU would not allow the ACT and NSW unions to come to grief, as a result of the razor gang's decision. But his admission that the only way the national body could help would be by breaking open its piggy bank, comes only days after he expressed concern at how little the ARU had left of its 2003 World Cup windfall.
George Brandis, sports minister in the former government, insisted yesterday the decision to approve the $25 million grant had nothing to do with the election: "It was a decision the government made months before the election, indeed in the fiscal year before the election."
Ironically, he revealed it was public criticism by former premier Peter Beattie that the Coalition had provided virtually no funding for Queensland sporting infrastructure in its 11 years in office that triggered the Howard government's assistance.
Intending to refute Beattie's claim, Brandis had asked his department to provide him with a full list of what money the Coalition government had allocated to sport in Queensland, only to discover that the premier's criticism was valid.
When he brought this to Howard's attention, the prime minister had asked what Queensland projects deserved assistance -- a question that coincided with the initial approach by the Queensland Rugby Union.
"So it had nothing to do with prime minister Howard loving rugby," said Brandis. "Of course he does, but he also loves rugby league and cricket and a whole range of sports. It was simply that Ballymore was the right project in the right place at the right time."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...012430,00.html
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